The Persians and Other Plays is a collection of plays and commentary about plays by Aeschylus.

The book contains the following:
The Persians
Seven Against Thebes
The Suppliants
Prometheus Bound


Each play comes with a thorough introduction of the play itself as well as details of what we (think we) know about the history of the play's original performances and how they may have influenced other Classical plays and playwrights, references in which inevitably have been used to date the plays themselves.
This is followed by more commentary and notes on the plays and on related plays that may have existed.

For example, it appears from the commentary that it has long been unclear in what order Aeschylus wrote the plays:

The production of 472 is the only one by Aeschylus that is known to have consisted of four plays whose stories were, on the face of it, unrelated - indeed, they were not even placed in proper chronological order. The first play was Phineus, about an episode in the saga of the Argonauts. This was followed by The Persians; then, jumping back to the heroic age, by Glaucus of Potniae, about a man who subjected his horses to an unnatural training regime and was devoured by them after crashing in a chariot race; and then by a satyr play about Prometheus ("Prometheus the Fire-Bearer" or "Fire-Kindler"). Repeated efforts have been made to find method behind the apparent madness of this arrangement, so far with little success.

As entertaining as it is to imagine someone making a simple mistake when noting down the running order of the plays in Ancient times, this must be quite frustrating to Classicists.

It took me way longer to read this collection than I thought but I don't regret a single minute of it.

While some of the concepts discussed and displayed in the plays were not instantly recognisable to a 20th- and 21th-century reader, the context and explanatory notes provided by Alan H. Sommerstein were so excellent that each of the plays not only made sense but actually made it a joy to discover how Aeschylus' may have raised smiles in some and incensed others of his audiences.

And some ideas and points of view in his plays - especially the description of the Persian's defeat (in The Persians), the exposition that women may refuse marriage (in The Suppliants), and some of the rather humanist views of Prometheus (in Prometheus Bound) - were quite different from what I had expected. Or rather, different from what I have come to expect from the Ancient Greek world when coming to Ancient Greek drama after reading the Greek myths (in whichever version: Apollodorus, Ovid, or any of the modern retellings). But even coming to Aeschylus with some familiarity of other playwrights such a Sophocles, I found Aeschylus surprisingly empathetic, satirical, and ... oddly modern.

CHORUS: You didn't, I suppose, go even further than that?
PROMETHEUS: I did: I stopped mortals foreseeing their death.
CHORUS: What remedy did you find for that affliction?
PROMETHEUS: I planted blind hopes within them.
CHORUS: That was a great benefit you gave to mortals.
PROMETHEUS: And what is more, I gave them fire.

It is easy to think of Prometheus only as the rebel who went against Zeus' wishes and brought fire to mankind, but there is more to him. I loved how Aeschylus focuses not on the fire-bringing alone but also on his shared humanity, and on the prophecy that Prometheus knew of that would lead to the decline of Zeus' power, the proverbial Götterdämmerung of the Ancient Greek gods.

PROMETHEUS:
It's very easy for someone who is standing safely out of trouble to advise and rebuke the one who is in trouble.
I knew that, all along. I did the wrong thing intentionally, intentionally, I won't deny it: by helping mortals, I brought trouble on myself. But I certainly never thought I would have a punishment anything like this, left to wither on these elevated rocks, my lot cast on this deserted, neighbourless crag. Now stop lamenting my present woes: descend to the ground and hear of my future fortunes, so that you will know it all to the end. Do as I ask, do as I ask. Share the suffering of one who is in trouble now: misery, you know, wanders everywhere, and alights on different persons at different times.

First, an outline of each play:

- The Persians: Performed a few years after the failed attack of the Persians, led by King Xerxes, against Athens, this play of lamentation starts with a chorus of old men of Susa and Queen Atossa, mother of Xerxes and wife of the deceased King Darius, discussing their ill premonitions about the war. A messenger then reveals that the army was defeated. Darius' ghost appears and denounces his son, before Xerxes appears and, together with the old men, concludes with a song of lamentation. This play is less of a tragedy and more of a lamentation, and may have been a patriotic play through which the Athenian audience celebrated their victory by watching the sorrow of the Persians.

- Seven Against Thebes: Eteocles, king of Thebes, is preparing to defend the city against Polynices, his twin brother, who is bringing an army to fight for the throne that the brothers were supposed to share. A curse lies on them – Oedipus, their father, had previously cursed them to divide their inheritance by the sword. Seven men are assigned to defend Thebes' seven gates from the seven men of the enemy who will be attacking them. The battle itself is not shown. Eteocles and Polynices kill each other, and the play ends with their sisters, Antigone and Ismenes, mourning them. This play won first prize, and was the third in a quartet of plays, the first two titled Laius and Oedipus, and the fourth a satyr-play titled Sphinx. Much of the end of the play is suspected to have been altered from the original, and the ending with Antigone and Immense may have been re-written 50 years after its original performance due to the popularity of Sophocles' Theban plays.

- Suppliants: Danaus and his fifty daughters arrive in Argos, fleeing from Danaus' brother Aegyptus and his fifty sons who want to forcefully marry Danaus' daughters. In Argos, they plead to the Greek gods and then to Argos' king. The people of Argos agree to protect the Danaids, and when the captain of Aegyptus' son arrives, the king protects them and the women of Argos invite them into their city. This was the first play in a trilogy, the subsequent of which would probably have portrayed the rest of the Danaids' story. As such it ends on a note of suspense.

- Prometheus Bound: Prometheus, a titan (the original rulers of the world before the gods dethroned them) who helped Zeus, has been punished by Zeus for giving intelligence and fire to human beings. The play starts with Prometheus being shackled by Hephaestus, the gods' blacksmith, on Zeus' instructions. He laments to Ocean's daughters. Io, who is being tormented by a gadfly sent by Hera, appears, and Prometheus, with his powers of foresight, tells her her fate. Hermes arrives, demanding that Prometheus tell him the secret that only Prometheus knows, which Prometheus says will lead to Zeus' downfall. Prometheus refuses to reveal the secret, and Hermes tells him his sentence, which is that Zeus' eagle will eat his liver every day for eternity. The authorship of this play is questioned, as is whether it was accompanied by other plays or not.

This book is prefaced by an introduction by the editor J. Michael Walton and the translators Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish. The introduction is excellent. It explains the background to the plays, considerations to take note of regarding the performance of the plays in Ancient Greece compared to our reading of the plays, notes on Aeschylus' style, controversies regarding the authenticity of certain parts of the plays, and their own takes on the controversies.

I like these translations. They are verse translations, and the translators keep things pithy, expressing concepts and images in just a few words. I suspect that some details have been lost, but every word is carefully chosen and important.

One thing that keeps coming up is how much has been lost through the millennia. The plays were each part of a collection of plays that were performed together, and because the accompanying plays have been lost, none of the stories, except for The Persians, are complete. This is particularly obvious in Suppliants and Prometheus Bound, which were both the first in a trilogy (or suspected trilogy, in the case of Prometheus Bound), and hence end unresolved. Alterations to the plays, in particular Seven Against Thebes, have also been debated and give the translators obvious trouble, while affecting our understanding and interpretation of the plays.

Taking each play as presented, it is clear that the modern readers' experience of the plays is very different from the original Athenian audience's experience. The only other classical Greek plays I have read are a few of Euripides'. Compared to Euripides' plays, Aeschylus' plays feature the chorus more prominently. There's more song and dance. In this version, the translators try to translate the phonetic sounds of songs literally, and there's plenty of "O-ee", "Toto-ee", "E! E!" and so on. The plots and character development don't move much and some of the dialogue is a little wooden, which is why I have given this three stars only, but I am aware that my enjoyment is tempered by being unable to experience the frenzy of noise and colours and physical movement that must have characterised portions of the plays, like in the women of Thebes' panicky pleas to the gods in Seven Against Thebes, or in the Danaids' fearful confusion in Prometheus Bound.

Aeschylus depicts the violence and suffering humans experience in the rawest way and exposes man's most primitive fears. In this he is ruthless.
I wish more plays had survived. I would read everything by him.

Sommerstein's translation of these 4 plays is very accurate and true to the greek but still manages to convey Aeschylus' poetry quite decently. Also highly readable. The notes are ample and very helpful, the intoductions are only of interest for academics.

Very much enjoyed this!

Beautifully written.

Aeschylus I: Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus


I read Prometheus Bound as part of the Online Great Books program.

This is a fascinating story. it is, of course, a Greek play written in the 5th century BC. The story is written in a form of prose poetry with dialogue and monologues intercut with contributions from the chorus to provide background and move the story along. The translation in this edition is quite accessible to the lay reader. This edition has a nice glossary that briefly explains references to persons and places in the text.

The story involves the "nailing" of the titan Prometheus to a mountain for offending Zeus by giving fire to man. The text is very clear that all of man's arts come from Prometheus and that Zeus's great ambition for man was to destroy mankind and start again.

The story moves in dialogue format. Prometheus talks to Io - a woman who has been horribly mistreated by the gods - and Hermes - who interrogates Prometheus about a prophecy that Zeus will be overthrown by a son (and who assigns the eagle to tear out Prometheus's liver for his refusal to share his knowledge.)

Reading this text at this point in my life makes me regret my misspent youth. This text raises questions about theodicy and the role of the gods in paganism. The sense I got was that Greeks viewed the goes with ambivalence. There is a lot of talk about Zeus being great and the first cause, but Zeus does awful things to individuals for petty and venal reasons. Likewise, Prometheus comes across as a kind of proto-savior, but one who denies a resurrection.

Again, this is a fruitful book for discussion and contemplation.

Prometheus Bound is

Unlike his successor Sophocles, Aeschylus is extremely difficult on the modern reader. He is our earliest surviving example of drama, and this clearly shows. This is theater at its most primitive state. Undeveloped, with much growing up to do. Aeschylus wrote about seventy plays, of which only six (and one's authorship being disputed) now survive. Only one of his trilogies remain, The Oresteia, and three of his plays were part of trilogies that are now lost. The Persians is a historical curiosity for being the oldest play in existence; and unique among Greek tragedies for its subject matter being based on a recent historical event.

Aeschylus's verse is known for its grandeur, and for its lack of action. His plays are made completely of speeches, with no action happening on stage. This fact combined with the piety of the writing makes the plays painful to get through, despite their short length. Some plays make the readers scratch their heads in wondering why they were chosen by copyists to remain down through the generations. Why The Suppliants or The Seven Against Thebes? These are questions still unanswered.

For the casual reader of Greek literature, Aeschylus is a trying author to read. For the average reader I would simply leave him unrecommended (Except for The Oresteia and Prometheus Bound, both of which are quite good for those interested). For those interested in Greek tragedy without dealing with the extravagantly outdated verse, Sophocles is the recommended course. I have not yet read Euripides, but from what I've seen he is also probably much easier to relate to as well. Aeschylus's writings remains important for Greek academics and historians, but as enjoyable reading there is much to be desired.

really enjoyed prometheus bound and i’ve always liked the suppliants. this reminds me to finish reading the first two works in the oresteia + prometheus unbound by percy shelley

The 3 star rating is for the translation and this particular edition . Not necessarily for the plays themselves .

Prometheus bound - I love that this explored Gods in a different light . What do we call Gods ? Especially when they do more harm than good . Prometheus has always been a figure cloaked in mystery and misery for me and this somehow added to his enigma . Io's has one of the saddest stories ever even by Ancient Greek standard . Her opening speech was particularly powerful and heart wrenchingly beautiful .

Suppliants - Definitely a play that is different in tone than the other ones . I found it ironic that the Danaids are asking mainly for the help of Zeus FROM rapists . The suffering he and Hera caused Io ( Their ancestor ) was just too raw in my mind . Anyway , this was interesting . The way Pelasgus handled everything was fun to witness .

Seven against Thebes - Possibly my favorite from this collection . This was so moving and beautiful . The way the events unfolded mirrored the way they did in Oedipus the king . The way Aeschylus questioned the idea of free will in myths was in contrast to Sophocles . And Antigone and Ismene's mourning was beautifully rendered . The way the chorus split away at the end !! I fell for this play tbh.

Persians - This was unique . Instead of a myth or a legend , actual history is the main focus here . I loved the little parts where Athens is praised . We can actually see the author trying to please the group of Athenians sitting in front of him . As a whole , this was informative and enjoyable .

Thoughts on the collection - I didn't really like this edition because the notes were lacking in content . I also didn't enjoy the writing that much . So I'm going to try out different editions and translations .

We don't read Aeschylus today for dramatic depth or nuance. In Prometheus Bound, for instance, there is nothing like subtlety or character growth. Instead, like most of classical drama, the works are exercises in mythology and pedagogical theme. Even so, digging a bit into these remains far more enlightening than any Wikipedia article or contemporary blogger is likely to offer.

Prometheus, for instance, is portrayed as the noble victim (a role Milton will later grant Lucifer) against a cruel tyrant whose justice is absolute and arbitrary. Zeus's loyal subjects are devoted through fear alone; their morality is purely transactional. The idea that one could hold principles above one's own life is--in Aeschylus's time (and ours)--a quaint and impotent virtue of a past era. Thus the Titans have fallen or gone into hiding with only Prometheus publicly displayed as immortal pariah, not spared even the mercy of death for his suffering. Along the way, near kin, sympathetic family, and fellow cursed victims visit him.

Prometheus has much to say, of course, about his devotion to mankind, and we can also see him as proud, defiant, and devoted to a justice which may return generations later after still more have cruelly suffered. His arguments are straightforward and oft-repeated; the strategies offered by his visitors are also simple and poorly-reasoned, but we aren't looking for nuance. In the classical theater, the message feels hammered, the tragedy wrought in extremes.

Even so, reading it today still feels oddly apropos as morality and principle seem harder to come by, as transactional values seem more prevalent. Prometheus gave mankind fire, but with it the entirety of art and craft, of learning and culture. What must be done with it?

3 ⭐

”Grief is man’s lot, and men must bear it.
Sorrows come from sea and land;
And mortal ills will multiply with mortal years”
- The Ghost of Darius

n  n
Aeschylus’ final moments – Tragedy of the Tragedian


Next time you’re feeling hard done by, as if the Fates look upon you unfavourably, or Eutychia has treated you frugally in her distribution of good fortune, remember, it could be worse! Aeschylus was killed by an eagle that dropped a turtle on his head!

This is Aeschylus, the earliest Greek playwright from whom we still possess surviving material. He wrote anywhere between 70-90 plays of which 7 remain including The Oresteia Trilogy (the only extant trilogy of its kind) and the 4 plays included in this collection: Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes and The Persians.

I’m confident that the works in this collection are not Aeschylus’ best.

Prometheus Bound is the first. I found it an interesting choice to make it the dominant/titular play of the collection given that many scholars believe it wasn’t actually written by Aeschylus’ at all but perhaps by his eldest Grandson (in keeping with tradition, also named Aeschylus). Probably just comes down to good marketing, being the most popular of the 4 plays. It’s well-known; I found nothing remarkable about it.

The Suppliants is very dull. Being the first, and only extant, play of a trilogy it’s pretty evident that it’s intended to set up the second and third plays for which reason, very little actually happens. The 50 Suppliant Maidens (the Danaids) are fleeing their 50 cousins (the sons of Aegyptus) who wish to marry them against their will. With the help of their Father, Danaus, they come to the city of Argos where they promptly proceed to emotionally manipulate Argos’ King, Pelasgus, into taking them in and protecting them; poor bugger. For sure you’d help them if they came to you and respectfully put forth their woes and lamentations but these women immediately attempt to put the fear of the Gods’ retribution in Pelasgus’ heart and threaten to off themselves if he doesn’t protect them. Not cool, girls!

Seven against Thebes is the third, and only surviving, play from Aeschylus’ Oedipus trilogy. The first 2 being Lauis and Oedipus. Polyneices, son of Oedipus, has brought an army of foreigners to the Walls of Thebes (his own home from which he was exiled) to take control of the city from his brother, Eteocles. This play is, essentially, a long lamentation from a chorus of Theban women regarding the unfortunate situation they find themselves and their city in, followed by a live draw of which 7 Achaen Champions will do mortal combat with the 7 Thebian Champions, including a prayer, by the chorus, for each Thebian champion announced. Let me tell you... It’s mind-numbing! The melodramatic lamentation and frantic prayers to the Gods from the Theban women is almost comical. I actually questioned whether this was a tragedy when I found myself smiling at the back-and-forth between Eteocles and the Theban women as he frustratedly tried to calm them. Aeschylus portrays them as the generic frightened and inconsolable maidens in distress and, as it goes on for more than a couple of pages too many, it grates on the nerves. Antigone and Ismene are much the same towards the end of the play when there’s another comical display of mourning but Antigone, at least, is a character with some grit and fortitude. When the choice between family and state is forced upon her, she chooses family; Confucius would be proud. I’m looking forward to Sophocles Theban plays!

The Persians is the best of the bunch, in my opinion. It is a standalone, the earliest extant tragedy and the only one concerned with recent history rather than myth. The tale of King Xerxes who leads the entire Persian army to its death at the hands of the Athenians who they outnumbered 3 to 1. Professor Elizabeth Vandiver of the University of Maryland says that the plays of antiquity that survive, most likely survive because they were highly treasured in the byzantine era for their rhetorical, grammatical and linguistic features and were, therefore, used for educational purposes. Persians was the only play of the 4 which I personally felt this would apply to. To me, it shares little of the banalities of the other plays and the syntax is just a step above the others. A couple of examples:

”Smooth delusion’s flattering smile
Leads but where her trap is set;
There man pays his mortal debt:
Doom has caught what death will keep”

By replacing a single word, many passages become timeless truths:

”Such was the flower of manhood,
The pride of Persian youth’s valour,
That we saw march away;
For whom the land that nursed them
Now grieves with ardent longing
And counts each empty day
That quakes our hearts, and lengthens long delay.”

Regarding this edition specifically; that is the Penguin Classics translation by Philip Vellacott with the assistance of advisory editor Betty Radice, I thought the notes were hit and miss. They begin poorly with many of the notes for Prometheus Bound seeming kind of redundant or self-explanatory (in other words, not worth flicking to the back of the book for) but improve in quality/relevance from Seven of Thebes onwards. The main issue is that there aren’t enough notes, at least for someone like myself who enjoys as much extra detail as I can get. You’re better off having some sort of Greek Mythology Encyclopedia for quick reference. I already owned Hamilton’s Mythology so I flicked through that for a little refresher but Vellacott, himself, states:

The following notes explain only a few of the references to characters, places and events in ancient mythology which occur on almost every page of these plays... in general the reader must be referred to works such as Robert Grave’s ‘The Greek Myths’ or Rose’s ‘Handbook of Greek Mythology....

You could also supplement with something in an audio format. I’ve been working my way through ‘The Great Courses – Greek Tragedy’ and it’s chock full of fascinating information. Enjoy! :)

”... let your soul taste each day’s pleasure, spite of griefs;
For all abundance holds no profit for the dead.”

Aeschylus has only seven surviving plays to his name. One of those (Prometheus Unbound) is now heavily disputed to be his. Vellacott's translation is of the four that are not the only full surviving trilogy - the Oresteia - which has entered deep into Western culture in its own right.

Self-evidently the survival of these plays, preceding the work of Sophocles and Euripides, testifies to the regard in which he was held but the lack of his other plays (which may have amounted to 90) and the non-survival of those of his rivals suggests that we are seeing only the tip of an iceberg.

Aeschylus was not the only playwright of his time, his audience would have been demanding under conditions that were semi-sacred as well as popular and the dispute over 'Prometheus Unbound' indicates that others could probably reach high levels of attainment.

Still, Aeschylus was clearly regarded as an innovator who reached heights of rhetoric and drama not achieved before, above all (it is said) introducing characters who related to each other and not just singly with the Chorus.

These four non-Oresteian plays still stand up to scrutiny even if we need guidance in order to think our way into what it must have been like to be presented with performances that were as much a type of free form religious and political experience as theatre, at least as we understand it.

Contemporary fashion tends to favour 'The Persians' both because of its unique references to contemporary events and because the modern mind favours what appears to be a transfer of empathy towards the defeated (the Persians) although I think this has been exaggerated.

My favourite - the one that still moves me - is the heroic war poem-drama 'Seven Against Thebes' which seems to capture the barbarism of city-state conflict prior to the Athenian discovery of 'reason' in all its raw energy just as it introduces us to the civic morality of tragedy.

Its masculinity is overt - there is a remarkable scene where King Eteocles upbraids the Theban women for destabilising the war effort through their inability to restrain their sentiments and their excess of religiosity. it is patriarchal but Eteocles has a strong point here.

This heroic rawness is perhaps what Nietzsche had in mind in condemning what Socratic reasoning was to do to the ability of Greeks to maintain their ability to prosper as 'peak humans'. It is less comfortable for our culture to read than faux-empathy in the propaganda against the Persians.

The other two plays read well in Vellacott's translation but they suffer more from being detached from the other plays in their trilogies. The Oresteia works for us today because it 'unfolds' with a form of thesis and antithesis resulting in a synthesis of more civic moral worth based on reason.

The meaning of Greek tragic drama is too complex an issue to deal with in a brief GoodReads review but the religio-political aspects lie in 'squaring' our nature with social obligation especially when various obligations start to clash. Which is to win out?

In 'Seven Against Thebes' King Eteocles is primarily honour bound to defend his City against raiders brought against it by his estranged brother Polyneices (whose lack of proper burial later will be the cause of another great tragedy by Sophocles in 'Antigone').

However, he is also bound not to spill the blood of his brother. Yet fate has decreed that he must fight him to the death at the seventh gate. The fate is written as part of a set of individual crimes with origins in breaching past taboo afflicting blood lines - the Oresteia is another such example.

In this case, the taboos breached are all those surrounding Oedipus, father of both Eteocles and Polyneices by his own mother Jocasta and compounded by Oedipus' curse on his sons because of their rejection of him. Antigone is going to be just the next stage in a succession of horrors.

Eteocles is actually given a choice by his own advisers, to send another hero against his brother or perhaps switch gates which a King could choose to do but Eteocles will not do this. The heroic lies in not avoiding an impossible moral choice with no good end if it is 'fated'.

Once it has happened that the allocation of the seventh gate is to him and that the raider on that gate is his brother, the tragedy unfolds as inevitable ... not as a choice or a matter of rational calculation but as an 'ill-fated' moral necessity to do an evil thing less evil than another evil thing.

Of course, the audience is seeing him put his City first but the avoidance of choice cannot have gone unnoticed nor its association with the legendary world's heroic barbarism. Tragedy is here truly cathartic, filled with a vicarious death instinct in which life is truly lived.

The fourteen heroes, raiders and Thebans, are all totally disregarding of death, placing honour and glory ahead of a quiet life, much as we have come to expect from Homer. Perhaps the dramatists want all Athenians to be heroes when necessary ... but only when rationally necessary.

In our own day, this brings us back to the legacy of Nietzsche but also to an awareness that just because God is dead does not mean civilisation is dead. Our general cultural incomprehension of Eteocles' decision-making possibly defines the full victory of 'reason' over 'life'.

This play, set alongside the defiance of 'God' in 'Prometheus Unbound' and the brilliant exposition of girlish terror of quasi-incestuous rape and of social obligation in 'The Suppliants', shows a society living in a state of reason performatively exploring questions of sentiment and honour.

We cannot honestly know what a Greek citizen thought of all this but the fact that such plays were far from unusual and highly regarded suggests that an entire society needed 'drama' in some way to 'square' the conflicts within itself and get debate going about right action.

The gods too are 'real' although it is hard to get a fix on how an ancient actually felt about these capricious and often cruel creations. The overwhelming sense is of the gods, under all-father Zeus, maintaining right order in the world where right order was not always that of reason.

If the city was based on reason among men, nature and society or rather natural social relations in family and tribe and in war were not. The gods, who spoke for right order outside men's rules, ruled this world of natural social relations, right behaviour and right ritual.

'Squaring' civil order with the natural order (including the justified sentiments of society and culture prior to the laws) must have been a constant process of civil and personal negotiation. Greek tragedy helped worked out the limits of the game and educate a populace about them.

In 'The Suppliants'. Pelasgus King of Argos explores every 'reasonable' argument why he should not plunge his people into war to save the 'virtue' of 50 distant relatives threatened with rape by their Egyptian cousins.

In the end, he accepts, having realised that a higher law answerable to the Gods requires that he protect the girls, that he must challenge the Egyptians despite the inevitable grim result. His people agree with him. This is community heroism and truly absurd in the existential sense.

The sense we get is of the very real belief in a 'higher law' provided by the Gods (although this means within a framework laid out with strict justice and order by Zeus) whose breach must lead to tragedy often generations later and that reasoning is there to endorse this law not thwart it.

None of this higher law is systematised as in the religions of the book. It is customary and oral - things everybody knows are right but which have to be policed with frequent reminders directed as much at the forgetful as at the young. Community survival is at stake.

Doing the right thing (which is very different from the Judaeo-Christian faith-based 'being good') is not easy. The lesson of the tragedies is that not doing the right thing creates imbalances in the natural order that will be corrected in time - at the expense of your own blood line.

Drama appears later to move more strongly not so much towards expressing the crisis of heroic sentiments and the tragic results of breaching taboo but more heavily towards civic society as the resolution of the crises created by the old way of doing things - but our evidence remains sparse.

Greek Tragedy is complex and multi-layered, not easily analysed or summarised in secular terms, highly suggestive even while laying out its grim facts with crystal clarity. This is a shame and not a guilt culture. One should be shamed for soiling one's own blood line and 'fating' one's children.

Vellacott is an old translation (1961) but highly readable and directed at credible performance. With minimal academic infrastructure, he points out corrupt texts where they matter and provides indications of the sort of metaphor and references relevant to understanding the plays.